The use of fiber-reinforced composites is growing in popularity with applications in transportation, consumer goods, wind energy, and infrastructure. Some of the many reasons for choosing composites over traditional materials such as metals, wood, or non-reinforced plastics include reduced weight, corrosion resistance, and improved mechanical strength. Within the field of fiber-reinforced polymeric composites, thermoplastics are increasingly being used in place of thermosets as the matrix resin due to better durability, recyclability, thermoformability, improved throughput, lower material cost, and lower manufacturing cost.
Thermoplastic liquid molding with low viscosity monomers or oligomers has shown great potential as the technology for the mass production of thermoplastic composites. Compared to traditional thermoset molding of epoxy and polyurethane, thermoplastic liquid molding with monomers or oligomers provides various advantages such as short cycle times and superior properties of the resulting thermoplastic composites, including greater toughness and impact strength, weldability, and recyclability. One example of thermoplastic liquid molding is rotational molding, which is also known as rotomolding or rotational casting.